


Faster than Bullets

by Winterling42



Series: Flesh and Blood and Dust [40]
Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-22
Updated: 2017-10-22
Packaged: 2019-01-21 04:38:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,263
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12449862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Winterling42/pseuds/Winterling42
Summary: Max hears rumors of the Citadel.





	Faster than Bullets

Words traveled faster than bullets, out in the Wasteland. And in the hidden corners where lines were drawn and an uneasy peace held court, Max and Epharia heard of the Citadel. He was sliding shells into a battered shotgun when Epharia pricked her ears and went stiff. Max pretended not to notice, brushing imaginary dust from the stock of the gun while the tattered conversation wound towards them out of the market’s noise.

“Green like nothing no one’s ever seen... Citadel, southwest of here... Water Queens, they’re saying... the last Imperator...”

Epharia located the speakers, a couple of people standing against a rig in layers of old leather, their daemons –– a frilled dragon and a red snake –– coiled in tense confrontation that belied their humans’ casual tone. Max snapped the barrel shut with a practiced toss of his wrist and started towards them, Epharia sticking close to his side. It wouldn’t do for anyone to see how far their range really was; not now anyway. 

The pressures of life and its opposite in the Wastes meant that people and daemons occupied a peculiarly vulnerable place. It was not so unusual to see someone like the Citadel’s –– no, like _Joe’s_ –– War Boys walking around, cut loose and deadened to the world. And fights between humans could easily devolve into daemons attacking people directly, taboo be damned. Epharia had had human blood on her teeth more than once. So had Max, for that matter. But while daemon-less humans might be tolerated, especially in theoretically free places like the markets, someone with a witch’s range might be looked at sideways and asked to leave. As a best-case scenario.

“Morning,” he said, politely leaving the shotgun pointed at the ground. Epharia let her tongue loll, grinning at the snake and the lizard. The snake unrolled her tongue, tasting the air in a friendly sort of way, but the lizard only ruffled his frill and stared Epharia down.

“What’s it to you?” 

“Heard something about a Citadel.”

“We’re doing trade here, scav. What you got to trade for a broadcast?”

Max hummed and nodded to himself, glanced at Epharia to see how she read the two men. “There’s a wreck,” he said, careless of the words’ jagged edges. “A day’s ride straight north. More’n I could carry on a bike.” Max jerked his head towards the bike, never more than fifty feet from him and with the rigged tanks ready to blow. 

The two glanced at each other. One bent down to scoop up his snake daemon, listening to it whisper for a moment. “Why should we trust you?”

“S just words,” Max said blandly, shifting his weight onto his heels. “Same as your trade.”

“Alright then,” the man with the snake turned to include Max and Epharia into an invisible circle and started speaking. After a sentence or two his voice took on a rhythm, a practiced beat like this was how he traded for a living. For a moment or two, Max thought he could have been a radio announcer from Before. 

“A hundred and ten days ago, there was a Road War, far to the south. The most powerful Warlords in the Wasteland, out looking for their lost Wives. Beautiful things wrapped in white and kept in gold chains. Out looking for the one who stole them: Furiosa, the Last Imperator.”

Max glanced at Epharia, who swiveled one ear back in skepticism. The trader took no notice, though his snake flicked her tongue out disdainfully. 

“There was the People-Eater, him gone faceless with greed. There was the Bullet-Farmer, let his daemon run down men like lizards. And there was the Immortan, the skull, who was traitored by the Last Imperator, his own Imperator. Together they summoned the greatest Armada the Waste had ever seen, that stirred up clouds in toxic storms when they passed. Even clan-lords from the Rocks hid and trembled when it drove by.”

“What’s this got to do with those you mentioned?” Epharia sat and scratched her head impatiently, and the other humans stared at her for too long a moment, wondering why a daemon would speak so loudly when her human stood so close. “The Water Queens,” Epharia continued, noting their shock but dismissing it. Whatever she saw in the traders, it wasn’t a threat. Max kept his finger on the trigger of the shotgun, just in case.

“I was getting there,” the trader said, scowling. “The Imperator drew them out, the Warlords and all their Armada, and she killed them one by one. In the bogs, in the dunes, in the rocks. They say she crushed the skull of the Immortan in her metal hand and took his Gigahorse all the way back to the Citadel, while his War Boys only howled behind the wreck of Joe’s own War Rig.”

Max could remember that – Furiosa with her own blood on her lips, reckless and triumphant, hanging from the side of the Gigahorse with Joe’s twisted neck limp in the window. The dead Warlord’s tongue had lolled, his jaw torn away. That had not mattered half so much as pulling Furiosa up, cushioning her fall when she could not stand, feeling her pulse grow steady under his hand.

He had missed the broadcaster’s retelling of the first part of the return, the triumphant arrival. He had no doubt it had been Furiosa who threw Joe off the hood of the Gigahorse for the Wretched, Furiosa who stood on that lift as the Wretched cheered her up. It was almost a relief, to hear himself hidden behind the story’s lines. He was so many stories. 

“And the Wives turned their daemons loose on the sands, under the old witch’s learning, and stood at the foot of the Citadel to proclaim themselves Queens.”

“Like the old days,” the snake said, her voice so quiet Max almost didn’t catch it. She looped a coil around her human’s palm and leaned down to speak to the other daemons. “When the witch-clans roamed wild, and men walked dream-tracks on the earth.”

“What about the green?” the frilled lizard hissed, still suspicious, still flaring at the slightest movement. “And the water?”

“They say it’s food and water given for a day’s work on the sands or in the tunnels,” the trader said. “I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t been there myself. Enough to save for a run, if you know what you’re doing. Them that used to be Wretched were lifted up. Them that used to be chained, breeders and milkers and the like, they got cut free. Now its not the Armada you’ve got to face, hunting the Citadel. It’s the whole bloody place, from root to shoot. Nearly had a Wretched kill me for speaking too kindly of those Queens, if you track me. I’ve never seen a thing like it.”

Max found himself smiling, without having decided on the expression and only half-remembering what it was meant to look like. But he patted Epharia’s head, and she thumped her tail once on the ground. It was good to hear that legend in the Wasteland, and to know that she had lived. He tapped the shotgun against his leg, hearing it clack against the brace, and nodded. “That’s a trade,” he said, the most of a good-bye he had managed in a thousand days. Better than the one he had left at the Citadel. 

From far away, Furiosa looked down at him, her eye swollen shut and blood still on her face. She nodded, understanding without words just what he’d meant to say. 


End file.
